


the agent who couldn't (keep his faith)

by azraeil



Series: stages in the life of tiago rodriguez [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Sorry Not Sorry, Spoilers for Skyfall, mentions of torture, random time jumps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 05:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azraeil/pseuds/azraeil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tiago finds out he was sold out and has trouble keeping faith in both M and himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the agent who couldn't (keep his faith)

**Author's Note:**

> I was thinking up different bits for my roleplay account for Silva on tumblr, and then this happened. So I posted it.

It was just supposed to be a mission, one that would be over and done with quickly. He would be in and then out within a couple days, if not just one, and then he would return back to MI6 and report everything back. Just like he normally did.

Except this time it wasn’t normal, and he didn’t know he had been set up. Something hard, metal - a bat, perhaps? - hit the side of his head and he fell down. He knew he didn’t have his guard down, so they had to have known that he would be there before he came. Someone had told on him.

——

Everything came back slowly, the blackness around the edges of his sight receding. The place he was in was dark, dank and desolate. His hands were chained up against the wall, and no matter how hard he tugged, they just bit into his wrists. Tiago could feel a sliver of blood pool down from his left wrist, into his palm and collect where he had it curled.

His eyes wouldn’t stay still. They were moving fast, trying to take everything in, trying to figure out where he was. His head was throbbing and that wasn’t helping the situation at all. A door slid open to the side, allowing light to shine through the door but he wouldn’t squint his eyes. He stared straight at it, tears pricking the corners of his eyelids, almost burning from the light he was unused to despite his short time of being awake.

“Mister Tiago Rodriguez,” A man announced, stepping towards him with a very distinctive accent. Even with how obvious it was, Tiago couldn’t quite place it. His mind was too jumbled, too messy. “Agent for MI6, taken into consideration to be a double-oh agent, showing outstanding ability in his field,” The man chuckled lightly to himself. “Well, not anymore,”

Tiago was, admittedly, very confused. Considering the situation, he shouldn’t be surprised, but he hated it. He hated not knowing things; being out of the loop; having others know things he did not. Knowledge was his power, and right now he was completely weak against these men.

“Who are you?” He mumbled, his voice painfully weak. How long had he been trapped in here, unconscious and unaware of everything that was going on around him?

“Someone you will wish to have never messed with, Mister Rodriguez.” And there was a pinch in his arm, and he fell again, into that endless pit of black.

——

When he woke up for the second time, he was strapped down. There was a cool metal table beneath him, the cold seeping through his thin clothing and burning his back. He looked to both sides, at his legs, and found them both strapped down. Not surprising. He tried pulling them free, but the same thing happened, and he resisted the urge to hiss in pain.

“Tiago,” A different voice this time, and he was almost purring. The agent pursed his lips, taking a proper look around the room. It was safe to say he wasn’t surprised by where he was — one of those cliché torture chambers every agent had come to expect from the ‘villain’.

“Don’t call me that,” He snapped, snarling up at the man as he picked up a long, thin knife. Despite his warnings, the man would carry on calling him by his name, one he had reserved for only M.

“Dearest Tiago,” The man crooned, lifting up the edge of his sleeve and touching the knife to his arm. It dug in, but not enough to slice his skin. Not just yet. “Could you tell us something? Tell us about MI6; how they operate; real names of the agents; where they are stationed..”

Tiago spat at him.

The knife dug into his arm.

“No.” Tiago barely even flinched, used to much worse. He refused to cry for these men, to let them have the pleasure of his screams, his voice becoming hoarse.. And so the man moved, dug the knife in to different places over his body and dragged. Long, harsh lines appearing ruthlessly over his already-flawed body.

He bit back a cry, biting his bottom lip and closing his eyes. If it had been any other situation, if a knife had not been digging into his arm and causing pain, it would have looked like he was in pure bliss. Feeling absolute pleasure.

”No.” He spat, and the knife was moved. It moved to his chest, the knife cutting the cloth of his shirt and digging into his skin. It ran across his chest, endless times, drawing blood in different patterns. The man was ruthless, allowing him moments of time where he would move away and think that it was over, but it wasn’t. Tiago had come to expect more pain.

It finally came to a point where he blacked out. Even with his high tolerance of pain, every person has the edge where they tip, fall without their own consent and feel relief despite it all.

——

And he awoke. He was still tied down, and he wasn’t surprised. There was a man in a suit, standing in the corner, and Tiago glared at him wearily.

“Do you know who sent you here, Mister Rodriguez?” So they were trying to use psychological tricks? Pretend that someone close to him had been the one to sell him out. Well, he wasn’t going to buy it.

“I don’t know,” He said, voice almost a whisper. “And I don’t care.” Well, he did, but he wasn’t about to admit that to the enemy.

The man feigned surprise. “So you don’t want to know that M was the one to give you to us?” Tiago looked at him for a moment, reading his body language. There was no lie in there.

“She wouldn’t do that.” He was her favourite. They all knew it. She wouldn’t do that to him, wouldn’t put him through this.

Soon there would be a rescue mission, they would come for him and help him escape and he would be back at MI6 and everything would be fine because M wouldn’t do that to him. She wouldn’t. Not after all they had been through together.

“Oh but she would!” It was said almost gleefully. “She sold you out for other agents, obviously ones that are more valuable.. And if you agree to tell us their secrets, everything you know, then we can help you get revenge.”

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that. Just you wait — I’ll be out of here within the week.” Tiago muttered, closing his eyes and letting his head drop back.

The last thing he heard was a chucked, “We’ll just see about that.”

——

And the days went by. More torture was inflicted, he still refused to give in.

But as this time went by, little flickers of doubt would appear in his mind. It would tell him that yes, he had been sold out, otherwise they would have come to rescue you by now. Why else wouldn’t they be there?

But he wouldn’t give in because he had faith. He had faith in M and himself and MI6 and the fact that they wouldn’t let one of their best agents go through this.

The doubt was still there, and he fought it.

——

“Are you ready to give in yet, Tiago?”

“No.”

And he bit back another scream.

——

“Will you tell us their secrets?”

”Never.”

He finally screamed for them.

——

Tiago let out a small laugh when months and months had gone by. Oh, he knew that the man had been right by now. M had sold him out; she had no plans to save him. So Tiago would just have to save himself.

There was no chance of saving himself in a conventional sort of way, and there was no chance of M changing her mind and coming for him. There was no chance of anything and it was all hopeless and done and he was just so tired. Tired of the pain and the waiting and the hope dwindling away slowly as the days went by. It was just so hard now. He couldn’t do it anymore.

He tried, oh how he tried. So hard. But it wasn’t enough. His faith fell away, first in M. Then in himself. One after the other, like a line of dominoes just waiting to be pushed over by the barest touch.

And they did. Tiago finally pushed it over and he laughed, and laughed, and laughed when he realised what had happened, what all of this had become. He laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world, like he had never laughed before. Tiago was sure he must sound insane by now, to the men that were always watching him, always there, a constant presence.

And he was done.

He waited for the man - he had never learnt his name, never bothered to. He knew this would be the end - to come in and grinned at him, showing once-white teeth in a straight line.

“One thing you should know about agents,” He began, voice casual, as though he hadn’t been tortured every day for who knows how long anymore. “Is that we always have a plan B, and you should always check for them.”

He knocked the tooth out, holding it out on his tongue for all of them to see, and he crunched down on it. The acid spread about his mouth, and he laughed again.

He laughed and smiled and chuckled and the blackness crawled once more around the edges of his vision, pushing against him, and he heard them all scrambling, a voice telling them to get moving to stop this from happening because damnit we need him for information, you idiots!

And he finally succumbed to the blackness, allowed it to take him in.

He grinned, because Tiago Rodriguez was no more.


End file.
